The ISAN system is administered by the ISAN International Agency, a not for profit association mandated by ISO and located in Geneva, Switzerland.

As the ISAN International Agency we have the responsibility of the overall ISAN system maintenance and administration.

We are a service organization and our mission is to implement the ISO 15706 standard (ISAN) and ensure full compliance by ourselves and all Registration Agencies with the ISO norm.

In order to fulfill our ISO mandate, the ISAN International Agency does the following:

Create a network of appointed Registration Agencies

We appoint and oversee the work of Registration Agencies which are authorized to receive and process applications for ISAN and allocate ISAN to the audiovisual works and versions. Registration agencies are located in different geographical areas to distribute the registration process and to provide a local support for ISAN users.

We provide the system and infrastructure in a scalable and evolutive IT architecture to maintain a central repository of unique ISAN and their associated descriptive information. Every Registration agencies is connected to this central system to allocate and query ISAN.This system facilitates the review and resolution of duplicative works application.

Develop, monitor and implement policies and procedures

We develop, monitor and enforce policies and procedure governing the operations of ISAN registration agencies and the process of ISAN registration by those agencies.

Implement generic marketing strategies

We develop generic marketing strategies to create industry and public awareness of ISAN and to provide support to our network of Registration Agency.We define guidelines which support the industry in using ISAN during the whole life cycle of an audiovisual work.

ISAN International Agency : organization

The ISAN International Agency oversees the whole ISAN registration process and provides tools to Registration Agencies and users to assist them in registering new ISAN and query existing ones.

The end-user registration process is taken care of by the Registration Agencies.
These Registration Agencies promote the adoption of the ISAN by the audiovisual media industries and process actual registrations.

The ISAN Application users, made up essentially so far of authors, producers, broadcasters, digital platforms, content management organizations, and people sharing interests in the audiovisual industry, are graphically represented at the bottom end of the above ISAN registration chart.
They register through Registration Agencies to obtain and manage ISAN.

ISAN International Agency : services & activities

The ISAN International Agency provides the following services:

To Registration Agencies

The International Agency provides support to the Registration Agencies.
The ISAN registry (a central repository) is physically hosted and maintained by the ISAN International Agency.